Interviews

How to defeat ISIS

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," February 26, 2015. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!

O'REILLY: "Back of the Book" segment tonight, since the Obama administration will not come up with an effective strategy to fight ISIS and the jihadist in general, it is left to Charles Krauthammer and I to do that. The doctor joins us now from Washington.

All right. You go first. What would do you?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, General O'Reilly. There are two aspects to this. The first is to try to imitate what Reagan did in the 80's. He took after some of the soviet proxies but not with direct American troops he did it by proxies, Nicaragua, Angola, Afghanistan. Succeeded in all three. If there are people on the ground, you supply them with weapons. The one thing that's entirely incomprehensible on what's going on right now with ISIS is why are the Kurds not being supplied directly by us? We should be running an air lift, a Berlin air lift.

O'REILLY: Do you want me to answer the question why?

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, the ostensible reason is, that I have to go through Baghdad.

O'REILLY: No, no, here is why we are not arming them directly the Turks. The Turks don't want the Kurds to be powerful. They don't want them to have the arms. Because as you know as the Turkish rebellion in parts of Turkey.

KRAUTHAMMER: And why?

O'REILLY: Kurdish rebellion.

KRAUTHAMMER: So why you tell me. Why are we acquiescing to the wishes of the Turks who haven't lifted a finger?

O'REILLY: I don't know. Absolutely right.

KRAUTHAMMER: To help us against ISIS.

O'REILLY: Well, they share intelligence and they give us some kind of shadow support. But nothing active. You are absolutely right. But that's the reason.

KRAUTHAMMER: They gave us nothing. They gave us nothing. They sit on the hilltop outside of Kobani and they watch as the -- our allies are being massacred. And until reinforcements arrive and who are they? They are not Turks, they are Iraqi Kurds. So, I wouldn't -- you don't allow the Turks who are not lifting a finger to restrain us. The Kurds are the best. They are courageous. They are skilled, and they have a stake in the game. So that's number one, you have to arm them. They have absolutely obsolete equipment.

O'REILLY: Right. And that is arm them to the teeth. All right.

KRAUTHAMMER: Absolutely.

O'REILLY: So, I'm down with that. So you and I agree on that. What's number two?

KRAUTHAMMER: What's number two is you need a serious air campaign. The number of sorties we are now engaged in is about 50 a day. In Kosovo we were averaging 500 a day. And the stakes for us in Kosovo and the Balkans was infinitely less that it is today in Iraq and in Syria. We should be running a campaign where nobody in ISIS lifts his head out of a fox hole without expecting it to be blown off by American --

O'REILLY: Why are we?

KRAUTHAMMER: By aircraft from the allies.

O'REILLY: Why are we not?

KRAUTHAMMER: The other thing is -- sorry?

O'REILLY: Why are we not bombing to the tune of 500 sorties a day?

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, that's for the same reason we aren't arming the Kurds. This is an unserious campaign. I think Obama's strategy is simply to hold things in place. He's looking to keep the status quo. He's looking for what's called containment rather than rollback, as he is for example with the Iranian nuclear program. And hand it off to his successor. He's not interested in this. He's interested in that neutrality. He's interested in immigration reform. He's interested in all kinds of stuff. His legacies for him in his mind are all at home. So, why is he going to waste his energy on a war that he thinks he's not going to win anyway and he'll just hand over to his successor?

O'REILLY: Why isn't he as outraged as Rudy Giuliani and others of the atrocities that we see every day? Why isn't the President taking it as personally as an American leader should, in my opinion?

KRAUTHAMMER: What do you think I am a psychiatrist?

O'REILLY: There you go.

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, there are a lot of things about Barack Obama that are hard to explain. This is his legendary cool, I don't know. I would expect that any American would be utterly outraged. Now, perhaps -- and we've heard him say this, you know this is just exaggerated. We get upset because it's now on the video. In the past it wasn't on video. This is like local news. He said, you know, I'm like a mayor trying to reduce the crime rate. He sees it as an inchoate, you know, a disturbing set of piece and not a real threat to American security. I can't explain it. But he is the president.

O'REILLY: Here's what I would do. I would have an international summit in Washington, D.C. with the 60 coalition members that nobody knows anything about because they don't do anything, and then anybody else who would want to join. In that summit, which would be a three or four-day meeting, they would put forth a military option both in the air and on the ground. And we would sign up people and then start to coordinate military action against ISIS wherever it may be. North Africa, Syria, Iraq. You get the whole world involved like Bush the elder did in the first gulf war and then you hit them.

KRAUTHAMMER: But the point is this, Bill. If they aren't doing it now, why would they do it at a summit? It makes no difference.

O'REILLY: You put pressure on and then you see who will do it and who won't.

KRAUTHAMMER: What kind of pressure? No country is going to join in a coalition led by a country -- a leader by the -- the leader Barack Obama who's heart isn't in it. Why would you join -- the reason that we got all the people to join us in the Gulf War in 1991 because everybody knew that Bush, the elder Bush, was going. He said we're going to do it on our own if we have to.

O'REILLY: If we had a strong leader --

KRAUTHAMMER: We are going to win and everybody wanted to be on the winning side. That's how you get a coalition.

O'REILLY: If we had a strong leader that would work, would it not?

KRAUTHAMMER: I know. But the summit isn't going to work. It has to do with leadership in Washington. And we don't have it. Summit or no summit.

O'REILLY: All right. Charles Krauthammer, everybody.

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